A 1,000-pound gorilla of wisdom

By Laura Marrich

Sound the trumpets! The Weekly Alibi turns the page on its millennial issue this week. That's 1,000 editions of the best food, film, news and entertainment coverage ever to lay ink on this great City of Duke. We drew from this pool of past insight to put together our annual Survival Guide.

2004

By Steven Robert Allen

There are several relatively lucrative ways to sell your body without ending up handcuffed in the back of a patrol car at one o'clock in the morning, screaming for your mama. Even if you've got no education and no marketable skills, you can still make a few bucks here and there by selling yourself—all perfectly legal, I assure you.

2005

By Steven Robert Allen

Alibi fast-food critic Nick Brown knows a thing or two about survival. A member of the highly secretive Green Chile Militia for the past 19 years, he spends three weeks every summer training with fellow survivalists deep in the Gila Wilderness near Silver City.

2007

By Jessica Cassyle Carr

I'm walking up Central at 5 p.m. against a cold wind. It's January, and dusk is quickly turning into night as I stride east, mall walker-style, toward my evening class at UNM. Only a block into the journey at Central and High Street, a man yells at me from a large, moving truck. I don't catch the particular crass flattery, but do get an earful of "Wooooo!" A loud honk follows and the vehicle speeds away. Humiliated and angry, I want gestured and spoken obscenities to flow forth and assault these degenerates, but for fear of retribution all I can do is seethe. As I continue walking—under I-25, past Presbyterian, by abandoned and defiled storefronts, passing hooker upon drug-addled hooker—I can now only see the city's ugliness and despair. Along the way I am heckled three more times.

2007

The floodwaters are rising, the earth is quaking, zombies are breaking down your back door and you have a house full of dinner guests (of the living kind). Your first instinct may be to pop open a can of Dinty Moore, but you can do better than that. The key to surviving extreme circumstances is to not give up. Do not give up hope, and do not give up your basic human need for fine foods.

2007

So you’re stuck in the wilderness with five of your closest buddies. You've run out of food and rescue is beginning to look unlikely. Though no one has brought it up, you’re all wondering who is going to be eaten first.

2008

By Benjamin Radford

Thousands of people say they were abducted by aliens, and you might be worried you’ll be next. If you suddenly find yourself floating out your bedroom window toward a mother ship hovering somewhere over the South Valley, take the following steps. You should memorize this list; if you keep it by your bedside table, you will likely be paralyzed and unable to reach for it—or your glasses—as you are tractor-beamed toward the ET visitors.

2009

By Marisa Demarco and Simon McCormack

Who knows what you should and shouldn't do in college? Not us, really. Plus, you probably won't listen to anyone, you animal. We're tired. We're world-worn. We've got bags under our eyes. Maybe that qualifies us as advice-givers after all. Humor us.